Making some coin

Posted on by garbagefinds

coins

One of the things I found in the woman’s bags yesterday was a plastic bag full of coins. Included were a bunch of nickels and dimes, a few commemorative Canadian dollars from the 80s, a couple of American Half-Dollars from the 70s, a coin from Jamaica (1969), and a couple of coins from the British Carribean Territories Eastern Group (1955 and 65) which once encompassed Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Antigua. There were also around 200 pennies, a few of which date to the 30s.

It’s sort of bizarre to see valuable coins being casually thrown out (and having someone yell at you for wanting them!). Even the lowly penny, which many people don’t care about at all (and I totally get that), has significant value for the metals inside. The Canadian Mint, now that it has ceased production of the coin, has begun melting down all the old pennies to recycle the metal. The older ones were mostly copper which has a fair deal of value in the market.

By recycling them we can get that metal back into circulation, which means that we won’t need to mine as much new metal, which means there’ll be less pollution. All in all it’s a good thing. It’s sad to see the pennies go, but remember that there’s still many billions sitting doing nothing across the country! I’m going to throw mine in one of those change sorting machines to make a quick buck or two.

As an aside, will this impending influx of recycled copper into the marketplace drive down copper prices? Interesting to think about.

I’ll spend the nickels and dimes and try to sell the other coins at a yard sale for a modest profit. Overall I’m going to estimate that this bag of change will net me around 12$. I recently sold a pair of old police handcuffs I found a while back for 20$. I also sold the curling badges from a few days ago to an online buyer for 40$, making my monthly profit 210$.

I still have to sell / list some of the things I found this month, so my “real profits” will become more evident in the coming days.

Regardless, it’s nearing the end of the month. Hopefully I’ll come across some things that’ll give a nice bump to my profit margin.

11 thoughts on “Making some coin”

  1. Excellent post.Great coin finds.Very curious about how many of the five garbage bags you rummaged through before that belligerent lady screamed at you to stop foraging?What did the bags mostly contain,besides household waste,yard waste,table scraps,etc?Very interested in knowing.If you were not able to save a lot of valuable stuff because of her anger,it would be very unfortunate.

    1. I think I got through 3. There was a lot of clothing and old purses and papers (maybe what she was concerned about). There was a bit of jewellery as well.

  2. hmmmmm,surprised that the coins weren’t more valuable.Are you sure?

    1. I think if I had a store they might be more valuable, but as is I doubt I can get too much for them. That being said 12$ may be a bit conservative of an estimate

  3. So your find says something about that woman. She was crazy since only crazy people throw away money! Funny how you found coins while yesterday I found 2 brand new designer wallets. Empty 🙁 Now I need to find cash to put in them LOL
    But actually… seems throwing away money is pretty common? In the last few months I have cash on a couple different occasions without even trying that hard.

    1. It’s fairly common. In my experience it has been mostly change (especially foreign money) but I did find an envelope with 28$ in old bills in it once. I assume that those were thrown out accidentally. Nice finds on the wallets!

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